


Conversation

by Sheffield



Series: M is for... [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-13
Updated: 2012-07-13
Packaged: 2017-11-09 21:33:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/458676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheffield/pseuds/Sheffield
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Christmas gift-fic.  In which John tries to disguise the contents of his Christmas gift from Sherlock, Sherlock successfully disguises the contents of his Christmas gift from John, and meanwhile John and Mycroft... have a conversation.  Of sorts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conversation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dorothydonne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorothydonne/gifts).



"Look," John said irritably as the black car drew up alongside him, "it's been a long day, and in among pandering to fifty people with runny noses and bad backs, I had to send a patient who thought she had a bad back off to have some tests for something that's probably going to turn out to be depressingly inoperable. And now I really, really want just to go home, put my feet up and have a cup of tea. So, no, I'm not getting in the car, and you can tell Mycroft from me that he can just make an appointment at the surgery like everyone else."

He kept walking but the car kept pace with him. The woman whose name wasn't Anthea smirked at him exactly once and then went back to texting on her blackberry.

The blackberry buzzed and she looked back up from the screen. "Seriously," she said, "get in."

The car pulled quietly across the pavement blocking his way and the driver got out, walked round the car, and pointedly twitched his gun in a "get in" gesture.

"Seriously?" John said, looking steadily at the woman with the blackberry, as if the man with the gun wasn't even there. "You want me to believe that my flatmate's brother is going to give the order to shoot me in the middle of London in the middle of the rush hour?" 

He was, usually, a patient sort of bloke but some things just were beyond a joke. 

"Leaving aside the fact that I have an appointment to go drinking with half of Scotland Yard on Thursday for Sally's birthday so I think the Yard might find my bleeding corpse in Regent Street to be a bit conspicuous, a bit interesting, even... but even if that wasn't the case, there's no way Mycroft Holmes is going to give himself that much paperwork. And you, mate-" he finally looked the gunman in the eyes- "No offence, but you put that thing away now or I'm going to take it off you and ram it somewhere that your surgeon is going to have a hard job extracting it. I did two tours in Helmand and I was double O before you were born so just lay off, all right?"

The gunman looked at the doctor, and the doctor looked at the gunman. And the gunman blinked first.

"We'll be back, you know," not-Anthea said brightly.

"Well make. A bloody. Appointment!" John said, walking away. And now his leg hurt and he'd missed the bus and hellfire but he hated the cocky young ones.

###

Sherlock had made him a cup of tea. An actual cup of actual tea. He inspected it carefully for severed fingers and recherché poisons and then thought, what the hell, and drank it anyway.

"What have you done, then?" he asked. Because, honestly, the last time he'd looked there hadn't been a teapot that didn't contain either frozen mice or alluvial soil samples, and this was clearly tea that had come in contact with neither. Had, in fact, been made by pouring boiling water onto actual tea leaves, straining the liquid after exactly the right amount of time and pouring it onto just the right amount of fresh - really, fresh! - milk.

"Familial obligation," Sherlock said. "Mycroft delayed your cuppa by - I calculate - two and a half minutes. Which is approximately how long it took me to make you a cup. With apologies from the entire Holmes family."

"Two and a half minutes not counting removing the frozen mice and washing and sterilising the teapot, I trust?"

"Mrs Hudson had a spare."

Which was going to cause them problems with their landlady which of course he would be left to sort out, but was nevertheless quite the nicest thing the lanky git had done for him in... 

Hell! Christmas! How do you get a gift for a sociopath who knows you've been fighting off an attempted kidnapping on your way home two and a half minutes before you actually GET home?

And how is this my life, he wondered.

###

Next it was the woman who's name wasn't Anthea, AND a muscular babyfaced driver with a gun, AND a sneaky fucker who came up behind him and tried the bag-over-the-head thing in the belief he'd be distracted. Because, you know, two tours in Helmand and a for-real diagnosis of PTSD weren't enough to get him a little respect from a minor functionary in the British Government, and nigh on twenty years as double O weren't enough to make M's son and heir even a little wary...

"You see, normally I don't do this kind of thing," he said after he'd thrown the sneaky fucker through a plate glass window, broken the driver's collarbone and given not-Anthea a well-deserved but entirely ungallant fat lip, "but I really, genuinely, am busy tonight. And while I'll be happy to see Mycroft at some point, I'd prefer him to make an appointment and stop making frankly disrespectful attempts to pluck me off the street. So you will take him the message, won't you?"

He pulled the driver's arm a little harder and pressed his foot a little deeper into the man's armpit till he whimpered agreement.

"Great. Thanks. I'll be going then. All right? Does anyone need me to call an ambulance first? Good. Glad we could have this little chat."

###

"Aha!" Sherlock said, handing him a cup of tea and snatching the carrier bag out of his hand in return. "Oh."

John would have resisted the temptation to play, could easily just have sipped his tea, closed his eyes and forgotten about the world for a moment but...

"Guessed, then, have you?"

Sherlock grinned, the normal people grin #2, the one he used when he wanted you to underestimate his brilliance.

"Socks. Weighted with sand... no... gravel, and then wrapped in a disposable urinal to give the parcel an odd shape, bulked out and partially disguised with newspaper and then wrapped in gift wrap bought from... Patel's in Upper Street?"

"Ah," John said seriously, "but where did I buy the tinsel?"

"It's not wrapped in tinsel!" Sherlock said indignantly.

"But the socks are."

There was a square box on the table, wrapped in gold paper and red ribbon. John quirked an eyebrow but gamely picked it up. "Mmmm... quite weighty. Books, maybe?" He shook the parcel. "Nothing moves inside, so not a game or anything with moving parts... unless they're firmly packed like a gift set or something." He sniffed it. "No scent, mercifully. Not a gift set, then. Books, most likely. Too big for one book, but no movement that would suggest more than one... How am I doing?"

"Very well... wrong in every single detail, naturally, but, really, a good attempt."

Eleven days till Christmas. Oh joy.

###

You don't argue with a taser, particularly not when you're hit from behind and the first thing you know about it is the floor smacking you in the face and the world going white and painful and there's some annoying person groaning but you're pretty sure it's you. So he didn't argue, this time, when they picked him up and put him in the car.

But he did wait quietly till he could move again, take the driver's gun away from him and use it to shoot six bullets into the same spot in the armoured glass windows causing them to break (because the bullet proofing is only good for eighteen months and even then sufficient concerted pressure in one point can eventually break through) and climb out and walk away, taking not-Anthea's blackberry with him and whistling quietly to himself as he lost the other three from the follow car in the Baker Street tube.

###

"You're enjoying this," Sherlock pointed out.

"So are you," he said, handing over the carrier bag in exchange for a cup of tea.   
"What, biscuits too, this time?"

"You need the electrolytes. Tasers, really! I'm disappointed in Mycroft. Not sporting."

"Well?"

Sherlock weighed the parcel in his hands for a second.

"More of Mr Patel's wrapping paper... he's entered into the spirit of the game and provided you with some detritus to disguise the shape and the weight... piece of packing case, some polystyrene packing material from a whisky crate, some acid drops and a cigar to disguise any scent... Mycroft's assistant's blackberry!"

"I won't insist you wait till Christmas to unwrap it, then..."

"Certainly not... while you and Mr Patel have been playing games with its appearance, Mycroft will have deleted all the useful information but..."

Sherlock started to laugh.

John drank his tea and eyed the gold parcel balefully.

"He's left us the mobile numbers of the entire cast of Strictly! We must drop young Harry a line in support. And..."

"No 'and', Sherlock. I want to see whether Chelsee or Harry wins, for real, fair and square - not have you OR Mycroft control the result."

"You think it's a fair contest? Interesting... Well, anyway - care to venture another guess at yours?"

John rattled the gold box and said hopefully "a new laptop?"

"Dull! And, of course, wrong."

###

"Interesting," John said as Mrs Mulgavenny came into the surgery for her next appointment. "Mrs Mulgavenny," he said seriously, "I'm afraid you have the worst case I've ever seen of Mycroft Holmes syndrome."

"Very amusing, John," Mycroft said. Assuming the evidence of his own eyes was right and it WAS Mycroft, of course, and not a lizard alien life form which could imitate Mycroft Holmes and, presumably, Mrs Mulgavenny at will. "And, yes, your first guess was correct. I thought it was time we had a little chat."

"Really? And I was sure you had at least another couple of kidnapping attempts in you. SAS next time, I thought, although I wouldn't have put it past you to send in James - and I mean Bond, not Moriarty, in this context, obviously."

"I really would appreciate a few moments of your time, John. I apologise if my assistant was a little... over enthusiastic in her invitation. I am, of course, rather busy and I find it is more convenient to meet at my premises rather than here, but I appreciate it's not always practicable for everyone."

"Except that I'm a doctor - you might have noticed from the stethoscope and the queue of patients outside? - so I have better things to do than sit in an abandoned warehouse drinking tea while you make up your mind what it is you want to talk to me about."

"Well quite, Doctor. I thought we might talk about my brother."

"About Sherlock?"

Silence.

"Well? Go ahead. You want to talk about Sherlock? I'm all ears. For the next... thirteen minutes, anyway."

"Oh, I think you'll find Mrs Mulgavenny has a triple appointment booked - no-one will become impatient for your services until we've quite finished, I assure you."

"Apart from me, obviously. The impatience, I mean."

"Quite. Well, if you would do me the kindness of restraining your impatience for just a few moments more, Dr Watson, I find I must ask you... what your... intentions are, towards my baby brother?"

The taser was kinder - similar effect, but at least it wore off in time. John was aware of the same feeling of being smacked in the face by a large piece of concrete and his brain whiting out, but the crogglement this time was... bigger. 

"What my... intentions? What my intentions are towards... Sherlock?"

"Indeed. You will have noticed, of course, that he has become quite distracted from his work of late. Imagine my surprise when his surveillance team reported him.. buying groceries. Chocolate hobnobs, I believe...? A particular favourite of yours, John?"

"Wait, this is the SAME Sherlock we're talking about? About this tall? Lanky git? Sweeps around London in a poncey coat pretending he's not doing vampire impressions?"

"Defensive humour. Hmmm."

"Defensive... Go away, Mycroft, before I call your mother."

 

Intentions! Sherlock! Bloody British government and its minor and major functionaries...

Except his brain was now playing him edited highlights of the last year and a half of Life With Sherlock, including the X-rated scenes that had never actually happened except in his imagination and he was clearly under the influence of some exotic poison, perhaps invented by Q, and delivered by Mycroft injecting it directly into the atmosphere from the tip of his bloody umbrella and...

Man up, 003, he told himself. You've really been and gone and done it this time.

###

"Well?"

He traded the carrier bag for a cup of tea as... usual, he realised. Sherlock had actually made tea-making for him into a... habit. And this time there were mince pies. Actual, made from scratch, mince pies, still warm from the oven and with just the right amount of brandy butter melting into the crust and... bloody hell, Mycroft was right, wasn't he.

He stood by the open door and waited for Sherlock to deduce the contents of this parcel.

"Come in," Sherlock said, but John leaned back against the door frame, crunching on his second mince pie. "Don't think so, mate, not this time."

Sherlock gave him the narrowed-eye, deduce-what-you-did-in-primary-school-from-the-colour-of-your-laces stare. John licked the last crumbs off his palm and looked up, guilelessly, just in time to meet his flatmate's gaze.

"You like mince pies. You particularly like them warm, fresh from the oven, with brandy butter, accompanied by tea. You had a long day at the surgery but at least one patient who... ah. Mycroft. Yes. I see."

"No you don't, mate."

"No? Let's see... Mr Patel's paper abandoned this time in favour of stealing supplies from the surgery... something of no intrinsic value, weight, heft... a token or voucher of some kind..."

But by that time he was close enough, and John put down his teacup and dragged the lanky git over the threshold and under Mrs Hudson's mistletoe and bent him backward till he could actually reach him for a good firm kiss.

And then stood back, heart pounding like he was back smuggling Gregor through the Berlin Wall in that godawful fake petrol tank contraption. But it was all right, because Sherlock's neck had gone a rather attractive shade of pink, and he was opening the brown paper and bandage package and reading it... now.

And grinning like it was, well, Christmas.

He let Sherlock pull him into the room, shut the door behind them, manoeuvre him over to the sofa and sit him down with the red and gold parcel on his lap. Only it turned out it didn't open so much as... it was a fake. An empty box, lined with lead to give it weight, with a fake opening at the side. So no wonder he hadn't been able to guess what was in it, because there WAS nothing in it, except...

...a slip of paper.

Identical to the one inside the brown paper and bandage package...

... which simply read "My Heart"

Well what a sentimental pair of daft gits we are, John Watson, former double o, thought ruefully as he set to work snogging M's youngest senseless.


End file.
